23 April 2015

The Cult of Self: It Rules the Day in Both the Left and the Right, Within the Church and Without

Since I'm a fanatic and a ranter,
it's time for another episode...

Our society
which is on a road to collapse and probably a violent one at that is following
the course of many that preceded it.

For years I
remember reading in history books that Rome fell due to its decadence and I
never really understood what that meant until just a few years ago.

You cannot
have a society that focuses so extensively on the individual and expect it to
stay together. I've noticed recently a lot of Libertarians are railing against
all forms of collectivism. While some forms of this are indeed are evil and
tyrannical, in all actuality you have to some form of collective to have any
kind of society at all. What they're railing against is the very notion of
society. It's a strange position for Christians to take who believe in the
power of sin.

They fear
the authority of government but fail to understand that every society must have
authority. Otherwise you have no society. It will last a very short time an end
in violence. Should it be a group that is (supposedly) accountable or gangs of
profiteers, often nameless and faceless who not only control life but have
tremendous power to manipulate through the utilization of media that a brain-dead
populace willingly consumes with abandon?

Society with
no regulative authority was once called the Wild West. They think that's what
they want because they've romanticised it. But surprisingly most people who
lived through it were more than happy to see order come to their neck of the
woods. Living in a lawless land means you have to kill or be killed. It's the
law of the jungle. Why this would be the Christian ideal is beyond me.

In fact many
on the Right who claim to be critical of all collective forms of thought are
still passionate in their promotion of Nationalism, in itself a form of collectivism
and often a dangerous one at that. In fact many of their so-called heroes are
little more than agents of the collective. They seemed to have missed the
significance of a uniform and what it symbolizes, let alone the endless parade
of flags flying in their front yards.

Everyone
operating out of purely selfish motives, the market model of society espoused
by Libertarianism and indirectly by many within the Christian Right produces
exactly what we have right now... hedonistic chaos and social degradation.

In the wake
of this breakdown there will be a new desire, a call for order and security.
This indeed will lead to a loss of freedom and we're already seeing it.

Is this the
result of some kind of abandonment of social Christianization? No, because the
process has occurred before in non-Christian frameworks. Besides,
Christianization is not a Biblical concept. There's no such thing as a
Christian society. This is a misuse of the term Christian. You cannot baptize
(which interestingly has an aspect of collectivism) a whole society. Doing so
means antithesis and discipline and consequently all ethics end up being
compromised. As Christians we are collectivised into another society one ruled
by a King and one that demands we die to self.

The
Christian life and ethic which flows from the work of the Spirit is not
something that can be implemented by coercive legislation. It will at best
create a veneer which inwardly is railed at and ultimately will blow up.

Our
society's collapse is largely due to individualism and the economic system that
it produces. The Church has championed this and is effectively blind to it.
They seem to think the solution is more of the disease.

The loss of
antithesis means the world and its values enter the Church and become confused
with Christian piety and can even be theologized and made into orthodoxy. I
contend that's where we are at.

It renders
the Church impotent in terms of assessing the real cultural disease. The Church
becomes part of the system and part of the problem.

And yet for
Babylon to be at peace there has to be some form of society, some kind of
collective consciousness where everyone realizes they're not the sole actor.
Government plays a role in this. It will always get it wrong, but some form
applied to society is better than chaos and the Wild West.

As
Christians we have to live in Babylon but we don't want Babylon to either grow
too strong or to lose its peace and fall into chaos. We're against
hyper-collectivism, which again is promoted by many Christians in the form of
Nationalism. But we're also against hyper-individualism which leads to social
breakdown and decadence.

But you
can't stand back and assess the situation when you've signed on with one of the
factions, put all your chips into their basket and are now engaged in trench
warfare. You're not going to have a very good vantage point.

State
enforced Christian ethics wedded to a individualistic capitalist system will
not produce the kind of society James Dobson dreams of. It will engender chaos,
decadence and backlash, and ironically the destruction of the family. He sees the problems of individualism or at least plays
lip-service to the notion but then promotes economic policies, not to mention
psychology which promotes the opposite. I'm also reminded of all the little
emails that circulate. A recent one calls old Paul Harvey a prophet and yet
it's the same thing. It reflects a jumble of Christian and non-Christian values
and judgments, misunderstandings of the issues and how society works and
ultimately is another example of platitudes in the echo chamber. It does
nothing to help Christians assess the problem or understand how to react. But
it sure tickles ears. I used to love Harvey when I was lost person. As a
Christian I found him to be something of a buffoon.

This society
has always been individualistic but people used to be a bit more pragmatic in
their outlook. Life was hard and humbling and for many people, a life of
struggle and suffering... and ironically it produced social values that looked
a bit more like what Christian values are supposed to look like. Service and hard
work were virtues, not for self-aggrandizement and ostentatious display but
because it spoke to what kind of person you were. You were defined by your
deeds, principles and ideas not what you possessed.

Individualism
became hedonistic and a person's worth was determined by how successful they
were which in turn was determined not by their virtue and adherence to an idea
or ethic, but instead by how much stuff (implied pleasure) they possessed.

I contend
the Church has largely embraced and endorsed the individualism which has
contributed to this mess and it has also been heavily imported within the
Church and as I said earlier, it has been theologized accordingly. I contend
even those who are critiquing the consumerism of the culture have largely
embraced it. They don't seem to understand their economic model and theology of
work, their vision of the Kingdom and their ideas about the Christian life
produce the very result they are critical of. People making six-figures, living
in $400k houses, driving $40k cars with stocks and investments, houses
overflowing with stuff, kids plugged into the system etc... are not in a
position to understand the nature of the problem. They are blind to the system
they serve and what it's doing to them and the hurt it's causing other people.
Their self-focus blinds them to the evil they are and have embraced.

So many of
them have so fallen under the spell of America, they've become absolute blind
guides when it comes to dissecting it. Even their critiques are rooted in a
power paradigm. Their criticisms are aimed at the secularists and the Left.
Everyone faction has played its part in the social breakdown but the Christian
Conservatives need to look in the mirror. They're drunk on middle class values,
security and respectability. That's what this is all about. If you take those
values, think through what they really mean and then amplify them with everyone
thinking in selfish terms... you'll end up with our present dilemma. It blinds
them to the evils of the American system and how exploits people within this
nation and especially around the world. Americans like their cheap junk and
their toys but it doesn't occur to them that in order to get these things they
are harming others and themselves. They're rotting their souls while the
corporations they serve steal and kill in order to make it work.

Is there a
moral breakdown and backlash? Of course. But all of this, both the Leftist
drive to purge the old, and the Rightist drive to maintain it are rooted in
self-interest and to use that disgusting word... empowerment.

Wealth,
consumerism and security are all about status and power. The United States was
on top of the world after World War II. Europe has caught up and is being
forced to reckon with some of these questions as well, but in a different way
and to a lesser degree.

Our country
praised and promoted the system which equated social progress with selfish
advancement. That selfishness might extend to your larger family unit, but
ultimately many find their familial success to be little more than a larger
expression of your own self-worth and hubris.

How many
Christian parents have embraced over-achiever-ism?How many are baffled when you say I don't
care if my kids are lawyers or professionals. I'd be happy with my sons being
garbage men. I just want them to be Christians. Our home is in heaven and our
treasures are there. Those that have abandoned if not abhor the pilgrim and
exile mindset recoil in horror at such a sentiment. They wonder, how could I be
proud of that? Even the question itself demonstrates a deeply flawed worldview
and one that is far from Biblical.

All the
while they engage in self-deception trying but failing to believe that all
'vocations' are valid and contributing to the Kingdom. Those at the bottom are
just as important as those at the top. Their cultural snobbery belies this
sentiment.

Why are they
proud to begin with? Where's the poverty in spirit, the mourning over sin, the
meekness in character? Where's the attitude of suffering and antithesis?

I suppose
it's easy for regular Christians when you have the Joel Osteen types running
about. It's easier to feel okay about how we live and think as long as we have
some extreme and obscene example like Osteen or the TBN crew to point to. It
lets us off the hook. We can maintain middle class values and feel okay about
it because there's always those 'over-the-top' people.

Actually
these folks, these frauds have just taken the cultural values, the very ones
celebrated by so many Christians and taken them to their logical end. They've
simply turned them up a couple of notches. It's just Dominionism applied in
different ways and to different facets of life.

We've become
a society of self-absorbed hedonistic gluttons. You see it everywhere. Like
beasts everyone clamours to buy, purchase, expand and make a name for
themselves. I guess when I sit on a mall bench, walk down the street, or listen
to conversation in an office, I'm seeing and hearing something different than
what others see and hear. Everyone is desperate for status and attention. In
all actuality most people are absolutely miserable because no matter what they
get it's never enough and there's no peace or contentment that comes with any
of it.

Some are so
self-absorbed that they cannot fathom that anything they do could be wrong or
immoral and they are outraged that anyone would even dare to question what they
do. They feel attacked and now in their selfish bestiality they insist everyone
must embrace and celebrate their cult of self pleasure.

Others are
so self-absorbed they cannot fathom that they would ever need to think about
anyone else, that they would ever need to curb their consumption of resources.
They feel threatened when people accuse of them of being hogs and so instead
they flaunt their consumption and race for their guns to defend their fat waistlines.

Our society
is gluttonous and it shows. The latest explosion of this social gluttony took
place in the 1990's and quite literally manifested itself in the physical
appearance of most Americans. Although fatness and gluttony often are
manifested physically it's not always the case. Some are gluttons with small
waistlines. But they're still gluttons in how they live and think.

Our culture
is reduced to clans and tribes of gluttonous monsters and hedonists fighting
over who gets the power. Everyone is engaged is a great orgy of ego-feeding. No
one ever has enough. No one can be content. I want it all and you have to like
me.

It will not
last. It's just a question of how long and more importantly 'how' will it break
apart? I think it will be very ugly indeed especially as we have a generation
that is perhaps the most self-absorbed and pampered in all of history. When
they can't get what they want, then look out. It's disgusting enough to watch a
two year old having a temper tantrum but when they're twenty-two, in America...
it will probably involve some form of semi-automatic firearm.

What we as
Christians need to do is figure out how to live as Christians in the midst of
all this.

How can we
stay true to our ethics when it will increasingly be a vexation to do so?
Surrounded by Sodomites and Narcissists, brat children in adult bodies, a
society that seems to handed over to a bestial conscience, how do we still
exhibit compassion and raise our children?

How can we
stand for the truth when we're surrounded by obese, all consuming, boastful and
violent gun toting, selfish resource hoggers who profess to be Christians? And
not just that they've made this obscenity into a theological paradigm? They'll
even take their television heroes who exhibit these traits and elevate them as
some kind of models for us emulate. They praise them for providing a paradigm,
a lifestyle they can turn into some kind of Sunday School lesson. It is a
theology of decadence.

How do we
live? It's getting increasingly difficult to remain sane as it seems like no
matter who I listen to whether it be figures in the pop culture or in the
Church, they are just dead wrong, all of them.

Maybe I'm
the one who has lost my mind!

I'm afraid
of my love growing cold. This culture is such a vexation I don't even want to
go out of my house but even there I can't find peace because of the spoiled
brats whose foolish parents have spent thousands to buy them 4-wheelers and
other toys to ride up and down the road tormenting everyone, never for a moment
considering anyone but themselves. Their parents slave to please their little darling's,
now perverse and monstrous expressions of adulthood.

Unlike so
many Christian leaders I don't think voting for the right person, getting some
laws changed or modifying the business culture is going to fix this disease we
call American Society. I do not want to live in a "fixed" version of
Babylon, nay Sodom. I long for Zion.

3 comments:

Here's a reminder that I, lowly, have appreciated your wisdom, your careful working out, and yes, even your invectives and palpable frustration. As we've both said multiple times, we have differences, but I have appreciated your intellect in our interactions.

In regards to your article on the individuaism of our age:

Wow, thanks for putting strong words to this climate. I value you calling a spade a space. We (Americans) are a bestial and monstrous people. I understand it hard to keep your love from going cold. In regards to myself, I realize how much I (as a millenial) have this virus in my bloodstream. I can't step outside of it. My brain has been pornified, my emotions are undisciplined, my fear is magnified, my nerve is diminished. In an age where "authetic" is the test, any attempt at detoxing from the zeitgeist is inhuman.

The mood we live in, wow, it's amazing how many currents of thought cross over. We are both gross materialists and gnostics, at the same time!! For myself, I find it hard to stand in the Biblical doctrine of creation instead of fluxing between despising matter and the creation and overvaluing it. Augustine's language of "disorder" has been helpful. And despite flaws, Tim Keller has been a blessing in the language of idolatries. But I digress.

I am a sinner who needs the gospel! I hope that keeps my love for others fiery. But, like Rome, something traumatic will happen if the American Empire will remain; otherwise a collapse is certainly a horizon of possibility. Yet the partisanship and factionalism will keep any sweeping change from being a quiet one. Or maybe the vitriol is just hot air, and as the fat hearted peoples Americans are, nothing will be done.

Conceiving of the Church as an alternative society, it's hard to create a culture that is divested from Americanisms of self-focus, clenched-fists, and life in the Spirit! Living in community with one another is hard. My church community is like Corinth. A real church, but dysfunctional.

And the worst part about the above is the inverse: despair. I meet quite a few who struggle with the agony of the system failing them, or falling through the cracks, or being considered a 'loser' by the world. For myself, it was this consistent failure that woke me up to the horror of the American system. But for others, it can be devastating.

Depression is a hard thing to pastor in and live through. It doesn't help where we are drowned in a culture that tells us unless we are climbing the corporate ladder, or have a magazine-cover family, or, more generally, having our every need met, then we are shattered. It requires a rich gospel, but one that needs to be daily applied. I don't deal among the arrogant, but I certainly live amongst the despaired.

Damning them for their deified appetites doesn't help. I wish it did, otherwise maybe I'd be more sane. God is good and patient with us.

Watching people panic after the latest supreme court verdict is interesting. I am reading comments on blogs, one after the other riddled with fear but I can't help thinking it's just a fear that the other political team won. I made a few comments on a page where a woman wrote a lament using "America" in place of "he" in a W. H Auden poem. I couldn't believe how stupid it was and was quickly taken to task for being dismissive of her grief. My only question was what are you guys grieving exactly? I think I must pray that my love not grow cold daily. It was interesting reading you saying that. These are tough days, but not because of the reasons these christo/american folks think. I pray we don't hang round in the slough of despond too long but that's my real fear. Guys just how do we do this every day?